Delhi polls: Gujjar leader Bidhuri ditches Cong, will join BJP today

After keeping the Congress guessing for almost a fortnight, former MLA and a Gujjar heavyweight Ramvir Singh Bidhuri finally decided to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday.

A veteran of several political parties, Bidhuri had contested his last election from the Badarpur assembly constituency in 2008 as a Nationalist Congress Party candidate and was defeated by BSP candidate Netaji Ram Singh.

He was elected to the assembly in 1993 on a Janata Dal ticket and had won the 2003 election on NCP ticket.

The BJP is likely to field him from the Badarpur seat again. His induction is likely to give the party a much-desired boost ahead of the assembly elections. Bidhuri’s party had earlier won all the four wards falling under the Badarpur assembly segment in the 2012 municipal elections.

While the Congress is looking to win the Badarpur seat with sitting MLA Netaji joining them recently, the BJP will now give them a good fight.

Bidhuri said he would formally join the BJP along with three of the seven NCP councillors in the presence of party president Rajnath Singh and in-charge for Delhi elections Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday morning.

Bidhuri was supposed to join the Congress party along with four other people, including his political bête noire Netaji, at a formal induction ceremony on September 6. But he gave it a miss as, sources said, he did not want to share the dais with the latter.

He later told HT that he was not contacted by the central leadership of the Congress and would take a final decision only after talking to his party followers on September 8.

Delhi BJP chief Vijay Goel said Bidhuri and his team came close to the BJP when they voted in the party’s favour in the south corporation. “We have been jointly raising issues related to unauthorised colonies and JJ clusters,” Goel said.